How To Protect The Ocean
SUFB 077: Species Tuesday Profiling The California Sea Lion
The California Sea Lion is an iconic species with a population that stretches from South Alaska to Central Mexico. There are 5 genetically different populations stocks within this range. The California Sea Lion is a highly intelligent species and is the subject of our Species Tuesday profile. Have a listen!
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http://www.speakupforblue.com/session77
Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast, session 77. Today is Species Tuesday. It's a new segment that I have on this show where I just document and profile a species that I want to profile. So I pick one and I just talk about it. And a lot of it's facts, so get ready for some facts, some hard, hard facts. And we're just gonna talk about today, we're gonna talk about the sea lion. And the difference between sea lions and seals and all that kind of stuff is gonna be a lot of fun. So stay tuned for this episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. (upbeat music) Welcome to the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Helping you get involved in ocean conservation. And now, here's your host, he just discovered Periscope and might be slightly addicted, Andrew Lewin. (upbeat music) Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the Speak Up For Blue Podcast. Your voice for the ocean. I am your host, Andrew Lewin. Founder, SpeakUpForBlue.com, marine ecologist and self-proclaimed ocean prener. And today is Species Tuesday's. And we are going to profile the sea lion, the California sea lion. Why are we gonna profile? Because I've talked about the sea lion before and really, I just like it. I like seals, I think they're very interesting animals. And I haven't, I don't know a lot about California sea lions. So this, in the quick research that I do for these podcasts, I decide I'm gonna hop on a couple of resources on the net and just basically give you some facts on the sea lion, the description of them, their size, their color, their behavior, their ecology and their conservation status. So we're gonna talk all about that. But before we do, if you enjoy this podcast and you wanna see more from it, you can actually support, as I've launched a crowdfunding campaign using Patreon, which is a support system for creators, such as podcasters and YouTube. YouTubers, I guess you could call them. So that allows people to really put out content that you like, like ocean conservation. And it allows you to just support them and get part of their community and really interact with them. So this podcast is really for you. So I'd love to see it supported by the people, for the people, by the people. You can do so if you go to speakupforblue.com/patreon, which is P-A-T-R-E-O-N. You can actually support at different levels. So you can support at dollar level, you can support a $5 level, you can support at 25, 50, 10. There's all these different levels that I've had. And I put incentives for each one. So you can, you know, you can support at a different level. There's also goals on the left-hand side of the page. You'll see goals that I have for this company that I'm really trying to build starting off with the podcast. And it's just, there's different goals. We're gonna start, we're gonna add some videos, we're gonna add some location stuff, we're gonna add some digital magazine. You know, just all these things that I wanna do to reach more people, communicate ocean conservation, really make you aware of what's going on and the people in conservation and the people who are conducting these wonderful projects that I talk about. And you get to talk to them and we interview them and you get to just interact with everybody, which I think is a great thing. So if you like it, then you can do so. You go to speakupforblue.com/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N and you can support me there. I'd really appreciate it. And thank you for those who support. If not, continue listening to the Speak Up For Blue podcast. There is no obligation to support if you don't want to, but you always have the podcast there. You just may not be part of some of the backend stuff that goes on that I share with some of my patrons. So thank you very much for that. But we're gonna talk right now about sea lions. And the first thing I wanna do is, I mean, sea lions have always been, or seals and sea lions, really pinnipids is what they're called, they're a type of marine mammal and they're taxonomy, they're called pinnipids. And they, there's a lot of different kinds, but they've always interested me because they just have so much character. They're very interactive, they're very intelligent animals. They can do a lot of things, they can mimic, they can do a lot of tricks that we've seen, sort of in zoos and marine parks and so forth. Whether you agree with it or not about the marine parks, they are definitely intelligent animals. And we see them barking and talking kind of thing in their own little languages. And they move through the water so quickly on land, they're a little bit awkward, but they're kind of fun to watch as they waddle around on the sand or the rocky beaches and they're found virtually everywhere. Not necessarily sea lions, but just seals and sea lions themselves or pinnipids. So I think it's something that we should know about and that's what species Tuesdays is all about. We're gonna talk about the California sea lions specifically. So before we do, people often ask me what the difference is between seals and sea lions. So I'm gonna tell you about them. First, the similarities, they're both marine mammals and they're called pinnipids and they differ really in physical characteristics and adaptations. So sea lions are brown, they bark loudly, they walk on land using their large flippers and have visible ear flaps. Seals have small ear flaps, they wriggle on their bellies on land and they lack visible ear flaps. Okay, so I have small flippers, not ear flaps, small flippers wriggle on their bellies on land and they lack visible ear flaps. So those are the three main differences in their physical behavior and adaptations. So if you see a seal, if you think you see a seal and you wanna know if it's a seal or a sea lion, you can look at them and look at these differences. So typically, if it's a sea lion, it'll be brown, it'll have ear flaps and it'll be waddling on its flippers, its larger flippers. A seal won't have ear flaps. They will be different color than brown and they will more wiggle on their bellies than actually up on their large flippers. So those are the three major differences there. Now let's talk about the California sea lion. Its range is from Alaska, Southern Alaska, all the way down to halfway through Mexico or all the way down to Mexico. Quite a large range, okay? Obviously we know a lot of the sea lions, California sea lions from California, right? That's where you normally would see them, but there are five different types of populations in along the West Coast. There's, let's see here, there's the US or Pacific temperate stock, the Western Baja California or Bia California stock, or what they call the Pacific tropical stock, and the Southern, Central and Northern Gulf of California stocks. So these are distinct, have distinct mitochondrial DNA sequences, so that means they're distinct populations, part of the sea lion habitat. And it's just, I find them just absolutely, absolutely interesting. So I wanna talk more about what they look like and their behaviors. So they're typically what we call sexually dimorphic, means the males and females are different sizes. Usually the males are bigger, they're almost eight feet long, average almost eight feet long, and they weigh up to 770 pounds. While the females are typically around five, almost six feet and weigh around 220 pounds. The females and juveniles are a tawny brown, although they may temporarily be light, gray, and silver after molting. So molting is when they actually get new fur and shed their other furs. The, what they call palage of the adults, so the fur of the adults can be anywhere from light brown to black, but it's typically dark brown. So the faces of adult males also can be light tan in some areas. Pups have a black or dark brown, palage at birth. And although some species are slender build, adult males have robust necks, chest and shoulders, so they're obviously stockier. Adult males have a protruding crest, which gives them a high dome forehead. It is tough with white hairs. They also have mains, which are less developed than those of the adult males in South American and stellar sea lions. Both sexes have long and narrow muscles. So that's just a little bit of the description of those, obviously I'm reading this from Wikipedia. So they always have like little differences in the males and females, and of course, between different sea lions as well. But they're very interesting species. Like I said before, they're a ranger from the Southern Alaska to central Mexico. There's five different population stocks, and we talked about stocks two weeks ago and we talked about yellowfin tuna, how there are different genetic stocks of the species, which becomes quite important when you're trying to, you're trying to conserve a species. You wanna make sure you conserve the diversity, the species that within species diversity, so the different stocks, so that the entire population can actually continue to grow or stay at the same population, the same abundance, so that's always important. So we have five different stocks. You wanna make sure if you're conserving a sea lion, the California sea lion, you wanna make sure you conserve part of a good representation of each of those stocks, not just one stock, but each of those stocks. So the type, they tend to haul out on sandy beaches and rocky beaches, or rocky beaches, but they'll spend most of their winter out at sea, I believe. It's the winter. Let me just double check on that, but I'm pretty sure it's the winter. Yes, that's right. So during the breeding season, they actually stay close to rocky shores and sandy beaches, which is May to August, while when they're not breeding, they actually spend most of their time at sea, but they do come up to shore to molt. So when they molt, they probably don't have the right fur in place, not as warm, so they tend to molt and they tend to just stay on shore. As I said before, sea lions are particularly intelligent and they can be trained to perform various tasks and displays and they display limited fear of humans if accustomed to them, because they spend a lot of their times on wharfs and marinas, on beaches. That's essentially the point, the critical point of contact with humans. And I always recommend if you are on a beach where you see seals or sea lions, never approach them, never touch them, leave them alone. They're not to be touched, they are wild animals, they can bite, they can defend themselves, but just to stay, avoid that, you just, they could hold any kind of disease or anything like that that can affect humans, they are marine mammals, so a lot of the diseases can affect humans. So you want to be careful, you don't want to touch them, leave them alone. Also, the stuff that's on your hands, you don't know what's on your hands, even if you have washed your hands with the antiseptic soap that they have or it's just one of those things that if you touch them, you can affect their skin and it bother them. So stay away, just given their space, you can look at them, enjoy their behavior and whatnot, but just stay away with them. From a quick story about sea lions, we were, I traveled with my family to San Diego, which is a lovely, lovely city. We went to a place up in La Jolla called Children's Beach. It's also known as Seals Beach. There's a bit of a controversy there, actually a big controversy. The beach originally was a haul-out site where essentially a haul-out site is where sea lions and seals tend to kind of hang out on shore. They're called hauling-out sites and they tend to warm up from the cold water or they molds or they're in a breeding area or they're tending to pups and whatnot. And what happened was in an area previously, before I got there, obviously, they want to make that beach into a children's beach so that children can go and play on this little beach. However, the sea lions were there. And so there's this big push from both sides to say, "No, we want it to be children's beach. "We want it to be a beach without the seals and sea lions. "Get rid of them. "Let's just put children on there." Whereas the environmentalists are saying, "Well, the sea lions and seals were there first, "so why don't we just let them kind of hang out there? "Cause that's obviously a place they like." So now they have a little bit of both. You can go down on this beach. It's a very small beach. It's no bigger than a driveway, I would say. Maybe a big driveway. But it's a small beach and you do get up close to these sea lions and I remember my, I wanted to get close, but I didn't want to touch the sea lions and I just wanted to kind of just, I wanted my kids, my children, who were two and four at the time, just as sea wild sea lions, because I have never really seen them at that point in California 'cause that was the first time I was in California. So we decided we went, I took the kids down, we walked down to the beach, down the stairs and we just sat up from the water and there was a couple of sea lions that were just, actually it was a sea lion, I believe, that was just at the edge of the water. When we sat down, it backed up a little bit and I told the kids, I said, "Just stay still. "Just watch them, look at what they do. "Just enjoy their presence. "We're not gonna touch them. "If they come near us, we'll just get up and we'll just move." And eventually what happened is the seal realized that we're not a threat. We just, he kind of creeped up, he or she kind of creeped up a little bit. Never really came close, we were still about 20 feet away from it, but it noticed we were there and it was watching us, just like we were watching it. And it was just one of those times where my kids just loved it. They still talk about that time, they remember it and they loved me to tell the story of how we went down and we looked at a wild sea lion, their wild seal and it was just one of those things that is just a wonderful place. I don't know why there's such a controversy. I think there are places if our behavior, if we act properly and appropriately, we can live co-existently and we can live on the same beach and we can use the same beach as long as we don't affect this haul upside. I truly believe that this is one of those places where this is for the sea lions, it's not for us. We are their guests and we should treat the beach appropriately. So that's just a quick story about sea lions and probably how I started to really get it, or sea lions and seals, why I find them so fascinating because they just think they're such a nice animal and it's just fun. So anyway, that's a little bit more about these sea lions. Now, their diet, they eat a wide range of seafood, mainly squid and fish and sometimes clams. Commonly eaten fish and squid species include, and I'm just gonna list off a bunch just so you can get a taste or a taste, no pun intended, a taste of what they have, salmon, hake, Pacific, whiting, anchovy, herring, rockfish, lamprey, dogfish and market squid. They mostly forage near mainland coastlines, the continental shelf and sea mountains. They may also search along the ocean bottom. California sea lions may eat alone or in small or large groups depending on the amount of food available. They sometimes cooperate with other predators such as dolphins, porpoises and seabirds when hunting large school the fish. Sea lions sometimes follow dolphins and exploit their hunting efforts. Adult females feed between 10 to 100 kilometers from shore, males forage as far as 450 kilometers from shore when water temperatures rise. So of course you gotta remember the California, the west coast of North America can have very cold water. You get that Alaskan current coming down, it can be very cold. So that's why you tend to see a lot of sea lions, a lot of videos of sea lions coming up on surfboards or coming up on boats just to kind of warm up, especially the pups because they don't have the fat to keep them warm. So when it is warm, they take advantage of it and they tend to travel further according to this. They also learn to feed on steelhead and salmon below fish ladders at Bonneville Dam is I guess in California and other locations where fish must queue in order to pass through dams and locks that block their passengers. So what this tells me is that they're very adaptable. Fish ladder really makes the fish kind of, it's kind of like a sticking point, it makes them go up this ladder but it's only a certain amount of fish can pass at the same time. So there's a lot of times, there's a bit of a line. And when there's a bit of a lineup, it's perfect opportunity for the sea lions to take advantage of that. Sea lions are preyed upon by killer whales and large stocks. At Monterey Bay, California sea lions appear to be more common food items for transient mammal eating killer whale pods. These are, when you say transient, they're not local, they tend to move thousands of kilometers into different areas. The sea lions may respond to the dorsal fin of a killer whale and remain vigilant, even when encountering resident fish eating pods. Sea lions are almost common, are also common prey for white sharks. They have been found with scars made by attacks from both white sharks and short fin, Mako sharks. Sharks attack sea lions by ambushing them while they are resting at the surface. Sea lions that are attacked in the hind quarters are more likely to survive and make it to shore. So obviously, they have some pretty big predators 'cause they're pretty big animals. The Mako, some of the short fin, Mako sharks can get pretty large. Obviously, great whites can get pretty large. And of course, orcas, not killer whales, orcas are quite large as well. And the transients are more mammal eating than the local fish eating populations. Hence, that's why there's a bit of difference. But sea lions will remain vigilant when they encounter any kind of orca, whether it be a transient and local. I don't know how to tell the difference, to be honest. And I don't know how they tell the difference, to be honest. So anyway, so that was kind of a cool thing to go over. I think they're interesting animals. And I'm not gonna go too much into detail. I'll put the link to the Wikipedia page where I'm getting some of their information. The conservation status, they are least concerned, which means they are not really that endangered. There's quite a bit of them. Of course, now with climate change though, and their range changing and their food changing, their food source changing, it will cause a bit of a difference. So you will be, and we've seen mass strandings of sea lions. And then there's, of course, there's that algae disease that causes to milk acid in their brains, causing epilepsy and whatnot that we've talked about previously on the podcast. So sea lions are, they're doing well population wise. However, we do have to be careful there. If they lose their food source, or a lot of their food sources, that could cause. And of course, these disease could cause a lot of changes. Climate change does affect their range, their foraging range, their eating range, and their breeding range as well. Plus, of course, new predators moving in. You never know, all right? So we do have to be careful in terms of conservation status. Monitoring is key, and there are people who do that types of things, I'm sure. So maybe we'll get them on one time and talk about the sea lions, get more in depth about them. But anyway, just let me know. I've run this for about three weeks now. Let me know if you like these kind of species. Species Tuesday's segment. And let me know how I'm doing. I know I read a lot of these facts, 'cause they are facts. But I was thinking of trying to get people out that are experts in these animals to talk more about them in a bit of a shorter interview style. So let me know what you think in the comments. The show notes are speakupforblue.com/session77. And just let me know in the comments what you think about these videos. And of course, if you wanna support this podcast, you can do so at speakupforblue.com. forward/patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N. And you can become a patron, become part of the Speakup for Blue community, get a little bit behind the scenes kind of videos and we'll build our company based on you, the people. So thank you very much for tuning in. I really appreciate it. As always, my name is Angelou and I am the host of the Speakup for Blue podcast. Have a great day and happy conservation. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)